


Earring

by Katalyna_Rose



Series: Kahlia Mahariel [9]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 20:34:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12307221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katalyna_Rose/pseuds/Katalyna_Rose
Summary: Taliesen is dead and the word "love" goes unspoken. But it is there.





	Earring

Blood rushed in Kahlia’s ears as she snarled at the Crow in her face. The woman fell quickly, blood spurting from her neck. Kahlia turned but there was only one enemy left in the alley. Taliesen faced off with Zevran and their blades were locked, neither of them able to break away or gain the advantage against the other. It had been only the two of them, traveling to the alienage to check on the elves who lived there. The Landsmeet was soon, but not yet, and Kahlia had wanted to see if she could help the elves in any way. Instead they’d been ambushed by Taliesen and a group of Crows.

“Zevran, you don’t have to go back,” Kahlia had told him as he looked at Taliesen with sad eyes.

“Of course he does!” Taliesen had shouted at her. “It’s that or die! Be reasonable, Zevran.”

“You have choices now,” Kahlia had insisted. He’d chosen to fight with her instead of slitting her throat and returning to the Crows. He could have killed her. She wouldn’t have fought him if he had. She was outnumbered and she never could have won on her own so she would have let him kill her and even forgiven him as her body grew cold.

But he’d fought, instead. He’d chosen her and freedom instead. Kahlia leapt onto Taliesen’s back and struggled to plunge her dagger home as he fought her. She heard the meaty thunk of a blade in flesh and Taliesen fell, pinning her beneath him. She struggled out from under him but he was moved for her. She looked down at him, Zevran’s dagger lodged in his heart.

“Kahlia, are you alright?” Zevran asked her somewhat frantically as he dragged her to her feet and held her steady. She looked up at him, both of them covered in blood and neither unscathed, but both would be fine.

“I… I’m alright,” she told him. She looked down at Taliesen again. “What now?”

Zevran followed her gaze and released his hold on her arms. “I’m not sure. I suppose I have options now, where before I had none.” He was quiet for a moment as they both simply looked at the dead man. Then Zevran retrieved his dagger and began wiping it off. “I suppose it would be possible now for me to leave,” he said softly. Kahlia closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see them and the despair she knew they would reflect. She’d known there was every possibility he would leave at the first sign of safety outside her group of friends and fighters. “I could go somewhere far away, somewhere where the Crows would never find me.”

“You could,” she told him quietly. For a moment he was silent.

“I think, however, that I could also stay here,” he continued. “I made an oath to help you, after all. And saving the world seems a worthy task to see through to the end, yes?”

Kahlia opened her eyes and forced herself not to show what she was feeling, how much it hurt her to think of him leaving. This was important, so very important, perhaps his first ever free choice. She didn’t want to influence him with her own feelings. She wanted him to make the choice for himself.

“If you want to go, you should go,” she told him, hiding the way the words tore at her heart. She’d known that she loved him for some time, long enough that this was so hard for her. But what she wanted wasn’t important in this moment.

“But that is what I’m asking you,” Zevran said, confusion on his face. “Do you want me to go? Do you need me here?”

“I want you to do what’s best for you, Zevran,” she told him earnestly. He frowned and looked so very young in that moment, so unsure, unlike his usual suave self.

“I… am not sure how to respond to that,” he finally said haltingly, looking everywhere except at her. “No one has ever… I mean, normally these things are decided by others.”

“That’s why I want you to choose,” she told him softly, gently. Finally, his eyes met hers. “No tests, no tricks, no games,” she vowed. “If you want to leave, you are free to go. If you want to stay, then stay. This choice is yours.”

“I… Err… I suppose…” he stammered, the first time she had heard him sound so unsure. She smiled a little. It was sort of cute. “Then I suppose I shall… stay? Is that… good?”

She looked away and tried to hide her reaction, visceral as it was. Her heart soared and she wanted to leap into his arms. His first real choice and he chose her. “If that’s what you want,” she whispered, still trying to stay neutral. But warm fingers touched her chin and tilted her face up to his. Her eyes were burning and she knew they gleamed with tears and she clenched her hands into fists so she didn’t grab him.

“You really would have let me walk away,” he murmured, examining her face.

“Of course,” she told him softly. “Your life is your choice. I am Dalish and my people revere freedom as though it were a god. How could I take yours away from you?”

He didn’t answer. He pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her, and kissed her. She cried out when his warm lips met hers and he took advantage to slip his tongue between her lips and into her mouth. She melted in his arms, despite the blood and gore and the stench of death and refuse in the alley, and she kissed him back, clutching at his shoulders. She tasted blood that belonged to neither of them, but it didn’t matter because he was there, right there, arms around her and tongue in her mouth and he was going to stay.

That night, after they’d returned to Arl Eamon’s mansion in the Market District and gotten cleaned up, their wounds bandaged, he sought her out. It was after dinner, when most of the estate had gone to bed, but she was in the library, hiding amongst the books and thinking about the battles to come.

“There you are.” A soft-voiced purr had her turning with a smile to face Zevran. She reached for him, but he remained where he was, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, hands clenched in front of him.

“Are you alright?” she asked him. Like flipping a switch, he smiled, all heat and confidence again, but it was brittle.

“It seems an appropriate moment to give you this,” he told her, reaching out a hand. She extended her palm to receive whatever it was and he dropped an earring into her hand. She tilted it to the light to examine it. It was lovely, a gold hoop with amber chips on it. “I acquired it on my very first mission for the Crows,” he told her while she admired it. “A Rivaini merchant prince, and he was wearing a single jeweled earring when I killed him. In fact, that was about all he was wearing.” Kahlia chuckled, looking up at him and the awkward way he stood before her. “I thought it was beautiful and took it to mark the occasion. I’ve kept it since… and I’d like you to have it now.”

Kahlia smiled at him. “Thank you, Zevran. It’s beautiful.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea about it,” he admonished, but he fidgeted nervously. “You helped kill Taliesen. As far as the Crows will be concerned, I died with him. That means I’m free, at least for now. Feel free to sell it, or wear it… or whatever you’d like. It’s really the least I could give you in return.”

He was trying so hard to make it seem like it was not a token of affection that she saw right through him. When she smiled, she could tell that he knew. He smiled in return, admitting it without words. She closed her fingers around the little earring and pressed it over her heart.

“Thank you, Zevran. I’ll treasure it,” she promised it. He fidgeted more, though he was clearly pleased.

“It’s meant a lot to me but so have… so has what you’ve done for me,” he told her. But she caught the slip and she knew what he meant. Her love was returned, though neither of them would say it. Not yet.

She stepped up to him and put her arms around his shoulders, still clutching the earring tightly. His hands settled on her waist as he looked down at her. “Would you care to come to my room? The walls are very thick, I assure you.”

He jerked as though she’d struck him and stepped back out of her embrace. She blinked at him, confused and a little hurt. They’d had sex in the stables and once in a closet before nearly getting caught by a maid and she hadn’t expected him to back away.

“No,” he said quickly. “I… No. I mean no offense, I simply… No.”

“Is something wrong?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“I do not wish to talk about it,” he told her, looking away.

“Are you sure? I could-“

“Enough!” he snapped, and it was her turn to jerk away. “I said I am not interested, can you not understand that? There are other things for you to focus on besides me, I am certain.”

“I… I’m sorry, Zevran,” she told him, trying to mask her hurt. “I’ll just…” She tried to move past him, intent on fleeing the library, but he stopped her with a gentle hand on her arm.

“No, I… I am sorry,” he told her much more softly. He took a deep breath and suddenly the tension in the air between them dropped significantly. “I am acting like a child. I apologize. It is… difficult to explain.” She looked at him again and saw that uncertain light in his eyes. He was still finding his feet after killing Taliesen and she had to give him some slack.”

“I’m willing to listen,” she told him, turning to face him again and leaning against a book shelf. He was silent for a moment.

“An assassin… must learn to forget about sentiment,” he began softly, carefully keeping his eyes on her face. “It is dangerous. You take your pleasures where you can when life is good. To expect anything more would be reckless. I thought for a long time that it was the same between us. Something to enjoy, a pleasant diversion and little more. And yet…” He fell silent and she watched his face, the uncertainty there.

“Are you saying you’re in love me?” she asked him, so quietly she barely breathed the words. They’d been forbidden for so long, those words. She wasn’t sure she could say them yet.

He was watching her just as carefully. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “How would you know such a thing? I grew up amongst those who sold the illusion of love. And then I was trained to make my heart cold in favor of the kill. Everything I have been taught says that what I feel is wrong.” _What I feel…_ Kahlia’s mind latched on to those words. He knew, but he could no more say it than she could.

“I’m no wiser than you in these matters,” she admitted softly. His lips twitched.

“I suppose not,” he said softly. “All I need to know is if there might be some future for us, some possibility of… I do not know what. Something.”

She looked up into his eyes and saw her own feelings reflected there. “I want that,” she whispered. “I want a future. Something…” He smiled, relieved, and pulled her into his arms.

“Then that is all I need to know,” he breathed into her hair. With gentle fingers, he removed the tie that kept it contained and allowed it to bounce in wild red curls around her face and shoulders. He ran gentle fingers through it and she sighed in contentment. He could almost convince her to love her untamable hair. Almost.

“Will you come to my bed?” she asked him. “Nothing needs to happen there, I just… I want to be with you. To hold you. To fall asleep in your arms. I always sleep better when you hold me.”

His arms tightened around her and his lips pressed against her cheek. “Yes,” he murmured. “I would like that.”

They couldn’t say the words yet, but they didn’t need to. Love was shared between them and they both knew it. The words weren’t necessary to know what they had.


End file.
